Katya Sourikova - Composer and Pianist

Raised in St Petersburg and London, Katya Sourikova’s musical and cultural background has always been diverse.

After training as a classical pianist at the prestigious Guildhall School and then the Royal College of Music, she began a long exploration of Jazz, finding a her musical voice somewhere between these two worlds both as a composer and improviser.

In 2004, Katya made her first recordings with Canadian musicians Ivan Bamford and Remi-Jean leBlanc. In 2005, the trio performed at the Baku International Jazz Festival alongside heavyweights such as Joe Zawinul and Greg Osby.

At the Banff Jazz and Creative Music Workshop in 2006, Katya’s mentors Dave Douglas and Marilyn Crispell helped her focus her creative energies. The resulitng two albums, Steps in the Snow and Angels & Satellites were recorded in New York and subsequently released by Weave Records in 2008 and 2010.

In 2011, Weave Records released Katya’s third album Ivan’s Dream. Recorded in Berlin, the album and resulting live project received critical acclaim, with the Katya Sourikova Group performing at the London Jazz festival in 2011. Also in 2011, Katya began to rearrange many compositions for chamber music ensembles, thus bringing her journey from her classical roots and through the jazz idiom full circle. This has resulted in two new live projects, Queen Maud Land for chamber ensemble and Jazz Quartet, and Casa Mila for Piano and Cello duet.

The album Queen Maud Land was released in 2016 following a successful crowdfunding campaign. The Casa Mila project continues, with Katya and Ruslan having performed a sold out concert in Riga, Latvia in January 2017.

Over the past year, Katya has produced several film scores. Her soundtrack to the movie Beekeepers of Kythera has won the Best Original score at Tropfest 2017, the biggest short film festival in the world! ( link to www.kytheramonamour.com)

Katya is currently working on the score to the new feature film by James Prineas - An Island Named Desire. She is also writing a sequel to Angels and Satellites, her project of several years ago. This time it's leaning much more heavily in the direction of contemporary classical music. Her collaborators are Roman Mints on the violin and Tom Arthurs on trumpet.